This recording, first published in November 1954 in the
United States by Angel and in Britain by Columbia, and
made at the end of April and beginning of May, was the
second in the series under the aegis of La Scala, Milan,
with its orchestra and chorus. Like the first, another
Bellini opera, I Puritani, it was not made at the opera
house but at Cinema Metropol; the season was still
going on, and Tebaldi was singing Tosca.

Norma is the only bel canto opera to have been
given almost continuously through the years at major
theatres in Italy, and under Italian sway in the United
States and Britain, since its first performance at La
Scala, Milan, in 1831. In the days before recording there
was a tradition of nineteenth-century Normas, including
its creator Giuditta Pasta, Giuseppina Ronzi de Begnis,
Maria Malibran, Giulia Grisi, Jenny Lind, Antonietta
Fricci, Teresa Tietjens, Maria Vilda, Euphrosyne
Parepa and Maria Peri. How their styles may have
developed, in response to the then ever-changing
repertory, we can only guess. By the first decades of the
last century recordings of the aria Casta Diva were
made by Eugenia Burzio (1872-1922) and Giannina
Russ (1873-1951), both of whom undertook it at La
Scala, Milan, and Ester Mazzoleni (1883-1982), who
did so at the San Carlo, Naples. Their singing is more an
impression than an actual account of the notes, not
perhaps because they could not have sung it more
accurately but because they were trying to inform music
whose style was by then old-fashioned with one better
suiting their own time. Their tone is often overly
anguished with excessive recourse to vibrato at odds
with the basis of bel canto, a suave, shapely and limpid
legato, as we read in singing manuals like Manuel
Garcia’s L’art du chant (1847). By the second quarter
of the twentieth century, when not only singers but their
teachers too were reared on verismo, Normas such as
Bianca Scacciati (1894-1948), Gina Cigna (1900-2001)
and Maria Caniglia (1905-1979) all had big vibratory
voices and used a vehement declamatory style better
fitting Ponchielli’s La Gioconda composed 45 years
later. Their principal concern was conveying the drama
and they were careless executing florid music,
aspirating it and crashing vocal gears. The German Lilli
Lehmann (1848-1929) and the American Rosa Ponselle
(1897-1981) sang Norma more accurately (at least as
recorded) and enjoyed successes with it, but did so only
outside Italy and were not part of the tradition.

There are many demanding rôles in the soprano
repertory, but few more so than Norma, and certainly
none as rewarding. As well as voice it requires the two
basic constituents of a great soprano: an accomplished
technique so her musicianship can be sufficiently
responsive. What makes Callas a great Norma is the
range and variety of expression she is able to bring to
the music. As she shows from Norma’s first recitative,
Sediziose voci, if the voice is correctly trained, then she
will be able to bring all the necessary colour, nuance
and variety to the declamation. In the aria, Casta Diva
Callas shapes the longest phrases with security and
poise as they ascend to repeated climactic B flats; we
note her subtle use of portamento and how she is
mistress of messa di voce, the art that reflects the
pulsating yet unbroken flow of the breath. Since it is
natural when the voice is correctly produced
spontaneously it gives singing light and shade. The aria
is a prayer to the moon so it is not too fanciful to hear in
the accuracy of Callas’s downward chromatic runs how
Bellini composes a musical metaphor for the moonlight
slanting through the leaves of the oak tree. Garcia states
‘it retains the gravity of the legato style but continually
changes by borrowing from the florid style, juxtaposing
sustained notes, with brilliant passages’. Callas shows
this off to perfection in her singing of the cabaletta, Ah!
bello a me ritorna, when she sweeps up from middle D
to high A in one breath with the most adept use of
portamento and then lets her voice fall again in a
passage of descending semi-quavers like some
articulate cello. No such effect is attempted before on
records of Celestina Boninsegna (1877-1947), Russ,
Ponselle or Rosa Ralsa (1893-1963), nor since on
records of Sutherland, Caballé, Scotto or Sills, yet when
we read the score phrase-markings indicate it. As Callas
herself was always stressing, everything she sang was in
the score, and so it was too, but the point is how
completely she could sing it.

In the first act duet, Ah! Si, fa, core, there is the
limpid tone she employs with Adalgisa in the
consolatory passages, then, as her suspicions are
aroused, ‘Roma! ed è?’, how she deploys different vocal
registers to colour her tone. In ‘Ah! non tremare’, the
firmly marked rhythm she uses to express indignation;
and in, ‘trema per te, fellon’, how furiously and
accurately she accelerates through the rapid downward
roulades before leaping from F at the bottom of the
stave more than an octave and a half to high C. In the
last act, as she rages against Pollione, ‘Si sovr’essi alzar
la punta’ through to ‘Mi poss’io dimenticar’ how
perfectly she realises Bellini’s instruction a piacere
abbandonandosi; the rhythm becomes freer until, at the
end, the accompaniment almost disappears. She
reminds us of the difference between, as Garcia
explains, ‘accelerando and rallentando which require
that the accompaniment and voice are together and slow
down or speed up the music as a unity, and tempo
rubato, which accords the liberty only to the voice’. At
the beginning of the finale, Qual cor tradesti how
telling is her execution of three groups of semi-quavers
on the words ‘Tu sei con me’, ‘In vita e in morte’ and
‘Sarò con te’. Then, in the final scene, Deh! Non volerli
vittime, on the repeated triplets, ‘abbi di lor’, each time
she utters them more intensely until eventually they
become plaintive devices, which she accomplishes
musically without disrupting the legato - easier said
than sung. By so doing she shows it is through the
singing, that Norma works its magic. It is here in the
final scene that Bellini rises to the greatest heights of
musical invention, one without parallel - pace Verdi - in
Italian opera.

The mezzo-soprano Ebe Stignani (1903-1974) was
a Neapolitan. A typical verismo singer, possessor of one
of the most powerful dramatic voices of her day, she
began her career at the top in February 1925 at the age
of 21 at the San Carlo, Naples, as Amneris. In that first
season alone she sang Maddalena in Rigoletto,
Glorianda in Marinuzzi’s Jacquerie, Meg in Falstaff
and Adalgisa. In only six years her repertory came to
include Azucena, the Principessa in Adriana
Lecouvreur, Santuzza, Leonora in La favorita, Laura in
La Gioconda, Orfeo, Eboli in Don Carlo, Dalila in
Sansone e Dalila, Ulrica, Preziosilla in La forza del
destino, Rubria in Boito’s Nerone and La gran vestale in
Spontini’s La vestale, as well as several Wagner rôles,
Gutruna in Il crepuscolo degli dei, Brangania in
Tristano and Ortruda in Lohengrin. She appeared at all
the leading Italian opera houses, as well as Covent
Garden, London, the Colón, Buenos Aires, San
Francisco Opera and the Lyric Chicago (though not the
Met). When she made this recording, although her voice
remains powerful, inevitably time has rubbed off the
bloom and she sounds her age. Unfortunately Norma
addresses Adalgisa as ‘giovinetta’ (little girl), for
Bellini wrote Adalgisa for a lyric soprano, not a
dramatic mezzo. Stignani sounds fine in 1939 and 1946
in complete HMV recordings of the Verdi Requiem and
Aida with Gigli.

Mario Filippeschi (1907-1979) began studying the
clarinet, but not until 1937 at Busseto did he make his
first appearances as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor
and the Duke in Rigoletto. His was a good size typical
Italian tenor with firm high notes. He sang throughout
Italy, at the San Carlo, Naples, La Scala, Milan,
Comunale Florence and the Rome Opera, and travelled
to the Colón in Buenos Aires and the Bellas Artes in
Mexico City. His repertory included, Maurizio in
Adriana Lecouvreur, Alfredo in La traviata, Pinkerton
in Madama Butterfly, Faust, Rodolfo, Arnoldo in
Guglielmo Tell, Radames, Andrea Chénier, Calaf in
Turandot, Arrigo in I vespri siciliani, Manrico, Faust in
Mefistofele, Alvaro in La forza del destino, Radames,
Cavaradossi, Gernando and Ubaldo in Rossini’s
Armida. The last four of which he sang with Callas and
of the last two a recording survives of a broadcast. For
Cetra he recorded Arnoldo in Guglielmo Tell, for HMV,
Don Carlo, and for Philips, Amenofi in Rossini’s Mosè
in Egitto.

Following World War II Nicola Rossi-Lemeni
(1920-1991) was one of three important basses in Italy,
with Boris Christoff and Cesare Siepi. Half Russian and
born in Istanbul, he made his début in 1946 at La Fenice
in Venice, as Varlaam in Boris Godunov. In 1947 he
went to the United States to appear with a new company
in Chicago as Timur in Turandot, and there met Callas,
who was to sing the title rôle. It folded, however, before
it began. In New York they auditioned with the tenor
Giovanni Zenatello, then retired, who was Artistic
Director at Verona arena. As a result in August Callas
made her Italian début, as Gioconda, and Rossi-Lemeni
was Alvise. In 1948 he sang at La Scala Milan and the
San Carlo Naples. In 1949, again with Callas, he
appeared at the Colón in Buenos Aires. In the early
1950s his career took him to Covent Garden, London,
San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan New York, the
Paris Opéra and, again with Callas, to the Lyric
Chicago. His stage personality was addressed yet he did
not establish himself at any of these. His voice had no
ring on the tone and was not properly supported; air
escaped through it like leaking gas. Although at first he
sang Boris, Don Giovanni, Méphistophélès in Faust,
Boito’s Mefistofele, Filippo in Don Carlo, Guardiano in
La forza del destino, Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia,
Colline in La bohème, Ramfis in Aida, Oroveso in
Norma, Giorgio in I puritani, by the mid-1950s he was
undertaking buffo and character rôles: Caspar in
Weber’s Franco Cacciatore, Dulcamara, Selim in
Rossini’s Il turco in Italia, Becket in Pizzetti’s
Assassino nella cattedrale and Lazaro di Jorio in La
figlia di Jorio, Lunardo in Wolf-Ferrari’s Quatro
Rusteghi, Cerevek in Mussorgsky’s La fiesta di
Sorocinzi, and Bloch’s Macbeth. He appeared in several
world premières and after 1965 became a stage director.
For Columbia he recorded Giorgio, Oroveso and Selim
with Callas, for Cetra, Filippo, and for Philips,
Rossini’s Mosé.

Tullio Serafin (1878-1968), born at Rottanova di
Cavarzere, near Venice, was one of the great conductors
of Italian opera. After studying at the Milan
Conservatory at first he was a violinist in the orchestra
at La Scala, Milan, then in 1900 at Ferrara began a
career as conductor. Engagements followed in Turin
and Rome. Through more than half a century he
appeared at Covent Garden, London (1907, 1931, 1959-
60), La Scala, Milan (1910-1914, 1917, 1918, 1940,
1946-7), Colón, Buenos Aires (1914, 1919, 1920, 1928,
1937, 1938, 1949, 1951), San Carlo, Naples (1922-3,
1940-1, 1949-58), Metropolitan, New York (1924-34),
the Rome Opera (1934-43, 1962), Lyric Opera, Chicago
(1955, 1957-58), and numerous other opera houses in
Italy and abroad. His repertory was vast. He conducted
conventional and unconventional operas as well as
introducing a variety of new works and worked with
numerous famous singers, including Battistini,
Chaliapin, Ponselle, Gigli, Callas and Sutherland. His
recording career was exhaustive and embraced the
HMV (1939) Verdi Requiem as well as both
Angel/Columbia Normas (1954 and 1960) with Callas.